Give Azumah Nelson his due....

I don't see too many people on here talking about Azumah Nelson. This guy was a great, great fighter.

What in the hell was he doing in the ring with Salvadore Sanchez with only 13 fights to his credit? It was a pretty damn close fight, too. This guy was able to hang in there for the better part of 15 rounds. It's pretty obvious that fight is what set him up for the great career he had. Most guys would have gone down hill after going up against a fighter like Sanchez that early in their careers; look at David Reid and Vargas just to name a few guys who stepped up big time too early and had their careers ruined.

Of course his fight with Whitaker and trilogy against Fenech was the staple of his career. But Ruelas, Grove, Genaro Hernandez, Leija, even old Juan LaPorte was still competitive when Azumah fought him.

Your thoughts.

 

I don't know if I'd call the Whitaker fight a, "staple of his career." In what sense, do you mean? Nelson had seen better days, & sure as hell, he'd seen better nights than that one. In fact, I don't know if he ever had a worse night. Whitaker gave The Professor a lesson, albeit an aged Professor (though Whitaker was the better man in every way, despite age & size advantages in their actual fight).

The fight with Sanchez, I agree, deserves more billing. It was an amazing performance & how sad no return fight could eventuate when Nelson was more seasoned. He is one of Africa's all-time finest boxers, no question.

 

Well Sanchez may not have been that good to begin with, who knows what would or could have happened if he had lived longer. A classic example of that, aptly enough, would be Pat Cowdell, who took Sanchez to a decision over 15, but was blasted out in 1 by Nelsn.

Also Nelson had some big wins over guys who had come up from much lower weights, like Fenech, and he probably did lose to Fenech the first time. He also shared a series of fights with another guy is almost never mentioned around here, Jesse James Leija.

Barry McGuigan had knocked out Cabrera before Nelson had.

That said he remains one of the greatest African fighters of all time.

 

You don't rate Sanchez so highly, Irish? I must admit, I do think when I see him ranked as the #3 Feather of all-time (which is frequent), I feel he is getting over-rated, but could anyone really look at the guy & question his standing as one of the best Feathers of all-time? Sanchez was a legitimate legend, & Nelson's efforts as a greenhorn, to me, cannot be over-stated. He was obviously a long way over the hill when he battled with Leija, too. I don't see why you would make a point of bringing up those fights. I mean, Ali split fights with Spinks (a green Spinks, to boot), but no one uses it to destabilise Ali's standing.

Did you ever hear the rumours surrounding Nelson's first fight with Fenech? That he was carrying malaria? I never found confirmation for that one.

 

nelson was a great fighter. i enjoyed his comeback when he dominated rueles and also avenged his loss vs. leija at the garden.

his war vs. sanchez was one of the best fights i've ever seen. dont relaly see the point of bringing up the whitaker fight considering the guy was never a lightweight. that was a stinky fight.

 

I meant from the named fighter standpoint. You could talk about Fenech, Leija, Hernandez, and a lot of on the fence boxing fans would not know what you were talking about. When you mention Pernell Whitaker, it's at least enough to raise an eyebrow, even if it's just because of his '84 Olympic affiliation.

 

Ah, I see. Maybe where you live --- I'd bet good coin I could ask a hundred people back-to-back on the street anywhere in Australia who Pernell Whitaker was, & none would have a clue.

Gee, that was an awful night for Nelson, though. He had the crowd, but that was all which was in his favour that night.

 

Its not that I don't rate Sanchez- its just that we don't know how he would have finished up, or what would have happened. Call it caution more than skepticism.

I never really ranked Leija-and it has been said that Leija being stopped by Nelson in the mid 1990's was due to weight issues Leija had. Dropping the decision in 1998 is not something I hold against Nelson.

It is said that the after-affects of a bout of malaria, and grief for his deceased wife, played a large part in his lack-luster showing vs Fenech- but beware...if we regard the night Tyson lost to Douglas as being "Mikes Prime" then, well, surely we must do the same for Nelson.

 

The key word was "On the fence boxing fans". Not necessarily mainstream fans, but people who catch a good fight from time to time and maybe talk about it for the time being. You can bring up Whitaker as a blast from the past kinda guy and they may know about him, even down under!

 

I'm not in a rush to make excuses for Nelson regarding the first Fenech bout, just to be clear. To me, he lost that fight just as clearly & free of reasonable dispute as he won the return.

 

Got robbed in the disgusting third bout though. Fenech put on an atrocious display of running in what may have been a screwjob. Nelson intimated that they were supposedto fight to a draw.

 

Loved Azumah. He ended that Australian fraud that was Jeff Fenech.

Well done.

 

I've always been a huge fan of The Professor.

 

Sanchez was a legend, Nelson as well. I'm a big fan of both.

 

Nelson's biggest career win and best performance was when he stopped Wilfredo Gomez.

I never cared much for the guy as a fighter, though he was very powerful.

I was at the Whitaker fight and he barely laid a glove on Sweet Pea.

 

I rate him as the #1 African fighter of all time. (for the record I rate Marcel Cerdan as a Frenchman).

 

Don't worry about it, Boxing Monthly did a review of the best African fighters of all time and exluded Sanders, Botha, Cerdan, Coetzee, Volbrecht, Vic Toweel, Brian Mitchell, Phillip Holiday and others on the grounds that they "did not represent the spiritual heartbeat of Africa".:bow::bow:

 

i did a top 30 ranking for fun a while back i included all those guys... i left out cerdan because i rate him as french. rate him as african and he is #1 over nelson imo. but to be honest i completely neglected phillip holliday! gonna have to re-work it now

 

"francois botha was one of the solid black fighters that lennox lewis impressively KOd."- qwerty

 

Holiday is slept on by a lot of people. He beat Ivan Robinson before Robinson went on to become pretty hot property with a brace of wins over Gatti, and his 12 round showing against Shane Mosley compared very favourably to the efforts turned in by guys like John Brown and JJ Leija.

Mosleys story was that the creatine he was on had given him diarrhea before the fight and he couldn't hold food down.

 

Well Botha was black. And blue. After the fight.

 

i know the fighter. just missed him when putting together a list

 

I hope you had Brian Mitchell in there? Did you have Kid Akeem and Poison Kotei???

 

oh yea... mitchell #3, kotei in the top 15... i thought i had posted a list here a few months ago... people weren't all that interested

gonna have to see where to put holliday tho.

 

As far as African fighters go: it's Dick Tiger and then everyone else.

 

personally i had tiger #2 behind the Professor

 

I have to put Tiger over Nelson (and everyone else) as well.

 

this right here

 

Sanchez/Cowdell is a classic exemplar of "Styles Make Fights" ... Sanchez also had trouble with a similar fighter in Pat Ford... tall, counterpunching fighters

Nelson landed a totally unexpected bomb on Cowdell

Sanchez was a great featherweight champion

 

I won't argue with people calling Sanchez a great FW Champ, but was he an ATG FW Champ? We don't know, he died too early for us to find out.